Need a decent audiobook player

[wazzag]

The audiobook player that comes with the iPhone isn't brilliant in my opinion. I downloaded a few audiobooks recently that were in mp3 format that I converted to mp4. These files aren't chaptered so I end up with one big (>10hr) file. Fast forwarding/rewinding these files is very hard using the slider!

Are there any other audiobook players out there that anyone can recommend?

Im not bothered about books, just the player.

Please help!

[patrickj]

There's an app that is called Audiobook Player that is superb. It's linked to the Librivox project (the audio equivalent of Project Gutenberg for ebooks) - its goal is to get all public domain books into audio format.

Right now it offers access to over 2,000 public domain titles - so if you're looking for contemporary stuff this will not work for you.

[Eninety2]

The audiobook player that comes with the iPhone isn't brilliant in my opinion. I downloaded a few audiobooks recently that were in mp3 format that I converted to mp4. These files aren't chaptered so I end up with one big (>10hr) file. Fast forwarding/rewinding these files is very hard using the slider!

Are there any other audiobook players out there that anyone can recommend?

Im not bothered about books, just the player.

Please help!

there is a way to convert them so that itunes knows they are audiobooks. in itunes do they show up as a song or in the audiobook section?

[scraggles]

Add the mp3 into iTunes. Right click the file in iTunes and click 'convert to aac' after that is finished, go to that location on your hard drive and then change the extension from .m4a to .m4b and then add that file to iTunes and it will be recognized as an audiobook and your iPod will remember the position you left off at. That's what I do.

[Europa]

Add the mp3 into iTunes. Right click the file in iTunes and click 'convert to aac' after that is finished, go to that location on your hard drive and then change the extension from .m4a to .m4b and then add that file to iTunes and it will be recognized as an audiobook and your iPod will remember the position you left off at. That's what I do.
Does that add chapters (the OP's original question/request)? If not, how is that any different from what it already does without any conversion?

[scraggles]

It saves the location he was at so he doesn't have to scroll through hours of audio. Google it. There are apps that split long audio files

[ImagineMBE]

Doesn't exactly answer your question, but why not add chapters? If you're a Mac, you can use Apple's free chapter tool. Since I'm a PC, I used iPodSoft's Chapter Master (shareware). They don't need to be perfect, just add a stop every hour or so, should solve your problem.

As for the rest of the advice:
A) Converting your MP3s to M4b results in quality degradation. On my books the audio ended up being significantly less loud.

B) If you have the latest version of iTunes, you no longer need to convert them to M4b to have them show up as "Audiobooks" in your iTunes/iPod.

Just right-click your MP3, go to Get Info, Options tab, and set Media Kind to Audiobook, as well as clicking the checkboxes for "remember position" and "skip when shuffling".
This method also allows you to play them at speeds, which you couldn't do before with MP3 audiobooks...

The only downfall to this method is that, as far as I know, you can't put chapters on an Mp3, not that I've tried or even looked into it.

In YOUR case, since you say your files are already MP4, I say just auto chapter them with some program or another. OR, since I have yet to find a way to split MP4, use your original MP3s (which I assume were smaller) and set them as audiobooks in iTunes.

Also: You need to be careful that the individual files aren't bigger than 150 MB, or the iPod will crash. Furthermore, M4b files flummox the iPod. If you play an M4b, go out to play music, and then go back to your book, the iPod will play it for about 10 seconds and then stop, bringing you out to the main menu, and losing your place. This is my experience with the iPod 5g video, I haven't tried on the iPhone yet. The iPod just doesn't like homemade M4b audiobooks, so all-around, setting the option for MP3s in iTunes, and having small files rather than chapter breaks, is absolutely the better option.

Edit: Just tested an audiobook in my 3GS, apparently if you have 3.0 you can adjust the scrubber rate by moving your finger up and down. Played with this myself a little bit, and you can easily skip around by hours or by seconds, and I am of the opinion this beats the click wheel into the ground!

[garykirsten63]

Oh. So many solutions here for audiobook. I am really so pleased. In my eyes Audiobook Player app is good. It works so smooth.